PANAJI
While it is an honour to lead a Goan association abroad, a Goan family has had the remarkable distinction of having four of its members, hailing from two Goan villages, to have headed Goan communities across three continents.
While Selwyn Collaço is currently president of the Goan Overseas Association (GOA) in Toronto, his paternal uncle, the late Alvaro Collaço, had headed the GOA UK, and his paternal aunt, Zulema De Souza, had served as president of GOA Toronto. Selwyn’s maternal uncle, the late Angelo Lopes, had been president of the Karachi Goan Association (KGA).
LEADERSHIP ROOTS
The Collaço family's roots run deep into Cortalim, where the late Nicolino Collaço, granduncle of Selwyn Collaço and uncle to both Alvaro Collaço and Zulema De Souza (Collaço), had served as the village's Regedor (administrative head under Portuguese colonial governance). After Goa's Liberation in 1961, Nicolino became Cortalim's first elected sarpanch.
Nicolino had already set the family's template of administering, organising, and representing his community through political change.
That instinct did not stay in Cortalim. It travelled.
ALVARO COLLAÇO
Alvaro Collaço was born in Uganda and educated in Goa and Poona. He rose over 19 years in Uganda's civil service to become acting head of the Budget Department in the Ministry of Finance. Idi Amin's expulsion decree in 1972 forced him to rebuild his life in Britain.
There, working for the British Council, Alvaro campaigned for over a decade on behalf of Ugandan Asian pensioners and widows left without entitlements, eventually securing life-changing backdated payments for dozens of them.
He chaired the GOA UK's Council of Management from 1983 to 1986, led the acquisition of the GOA UK clubhouse in Beckenham, and helped found the Standing Conference of Goan Organisations, now the GOA UK festival.
Alvaro was awarded the Papal Benemerenti Medal for services to the Goan community and the Church. He passed away in London in December 2024.
ZULEMA (COLLAÇO) DE SOUZA
Alvaro's sister, Zulema, took the family's organising instinct across the Atlantic. Before being known as a community leader, she was a hockey champion: captain of Maharashtra’s provincial team, winner of the All India Women's Hockey Trophy in 1958, and three-time All India University Women's Champion with Poona University.
Moving to Uganda in 1961, Zulema became the country's first woman hockey umpire and built Kololo Secondary School's women's team, which toured internationally and fed players into the Uganda national team, which she went on to captain herself.
When Zulema emigrated to Toronto in 1971, she carried the drive into community life, twice serving as president of GOA Toronto in 1982 and 1987, becoming the association's first female president. Zulema also spearheaded the first International Goan Convention in Toronto in 1988, a landmark event for the Goan diaspora.
She also worked for three years as a consultant for race relations in the Peel Board of Education and ran a private practice as an accredited family mediator and marriage and family therapist. Her other voluntary roles included board member of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, president of West End Seniors, and volunteer at the Paralympics.
ANGELO LOPES
On Selwyn’s maternal side, the family's civic instinct traces to Chinchinim and to the late Angelo Lopes.
Angelo’s early education was in Goa before moving to Karachi in the early 1950s. Angelo built his career in Karachi's banking sector, beginning with National and Grindlays Bank in the early 1960s.
Angelo became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, England, and by the late 1970s, had reached the third-highest position within Grindlays Bank in Pakistan.
Angelo went on to serve as general manager at Middle East Bank International Limited. He resigned from his first term as president of the KGA after moving to Hong Kong to lead its investment subsidiary, Middle East Finance International Limited.
Angelo later emigrated to Canada but was invited to return from retirement to help establish a new institution, Bank Commerce Al Habib Limited (later branded to Bank al Habib Limited). Angelo accepted the invitation and returned to Karachi in 1991 as an expatriate executive. He was again elected president of the KGA, serving continuously until 2010.
Angelo balanced professional office with community service, serving two terms as President of KGA, using his position in banking to open employment doors for young Goans. Such was his commitment to the Goan community and the Church that he was adviser to the Church in Karachi on administrative and community matters while continuing his lifelong tradition of helping those in need.
In 2010, Angelo moved permanently to Goa to be with his family in Chinchinim. Angelo passed away on May 8, 2013.
SELWYN COLLAÇO
If Nicolino Collaço set the template in Cortalim, and Alvaro, Zulema and Angelo carried it outward to Britain, Canada and Pakistan, respectively, it is Selwyn Collaço, nephew to all three from both sides of his family, who has drawn the family's threads back together.
Raised in Margao, Selwyn immigrated to Canada in the mid-1990s after working as a software developer in Mumbai, rising to be named the first Chief Data Officer of TMX Group (parent company of the Toronto and Montreal stock exchanges) and, recently, Senior Vice President of Data & Analytics at Peoples Group.
In 2017, Selwyn was the recipient of the Canada 150 Sesquicentennial award for serving the community. In 2019, he was named an RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award winner. In 2025, the Consulate General of India in Toronto recognised him among the Canada India Tech Council's Annual Award winners. That same year, he received the King Charles III Coronation Medal in the Senate of Canada for leadership of the Goan community.
Since 2015, Selwyn has been president of GOA Toronto. He was responsible for launching North America’s first Goan Community Centre, and re-launching the Viva Goa Festival to establish closer ties to Goa and Goan culture.
During the Covid pandemic, Selwyn led the Goa Covid Relief in Canada to raise funds to assist the needy in Goa. Alongside his civic and professional life, he has spent two decades fronting the band ‘Goa Amigos’.
